8 weeks to go until SATs - panic setting in....

Im not expecting an magic wand, but our school has historically had above average results in maths. We've had to put in lots of hard work, including booster classes and 1:1 etc. However, this year, we've got 12 children stuck at 3B and not moving AT ALL!!!! Teaching is excellent (we've even had consultants in to check teaching), concepts are understood one day, forgotten the next, chn rarely can apply concepts into problem solving etc. They can add one day, forget the next.... we're really frustrated... we've now reduced to teaching these 12 with one teacher and one TA and programming individual lessons based on identified need / securing level 3/4 booklets, springboard 5 and 6 and yet they are all stuck on 3B.

Im not expecting an magic wand, but our school has historically had above average results in maths. We've had to put in lots of hard work, including booster classes and 1:1 etc. However, this year, we've got 12 children stuck at 3B and not moving AT ALL!!!! Teaching is excellent (we've even had consultants in to check teaching), concepts are understood one day, forgotten the next, chn rarely can apply concepts into problem solving etc. They can add one day, forget the next.... we're really frustrated... we've now reduced to teaching these 12 with one teacher and one TA and programming individual lessons based on identified need / securing level 3/4 booklets, springboard 5 and 6 and yet they are all stuck on 3B.

Hi Mickey, the above responses were probably not what you were hoping for when you dropped in to maths forum in all good faith, but they do reveal a certain frustration with what is going wrong with our system at the moment.
Please don't take any of this as a criticism of you or your school, but I believe it is just as important that all children are given support, for example the children who are level 4 are given every opportunity to get to level 5, and so on.
The problem is that your school (and every other primary in the land) is judged by how many children manage to get across the line of a 4c on a particular day in May - this is patently absurd and we can all see through it. If the children whom you adjudge to be operating at level 3 (b is a trickier thing to judge) are not ready for level 4, then they are not ready for level 4, and no amount of beating/repetition/kumon/oily fish will make them develop faster.
Level 3 is possibly the widest of all the levels in terms of the skills required, so please don't think they are not making progress just because they haven't crossed the line yet.
I hope this answer doesn't offend you - it certainly isn't intended to do so, it's just to offer another perspective that NC tests are not everything, whatever your LA is telling your head!

Good post by Andrew
My suggestion?
Make up the data pass it on to the kids new school and don't do anything that will raise eyebrows.
That seems the general protocol right?
Anyway.....
I think flogging kids at this age damages their maths and a holistic approach should be taken to developing them as shown above. The only numbers that count are those going round in kids heads, not what goes on a schools figures IMO

Hi Mickey, the above responses were probably not what you were hoping for when you dropped in to maths forum in all good faith, but they do reveal a certain frustration with what is going wrong with our system at the moment.

Please don't take any of this as a criticism of you or your school, but I believe it is just as important that all children are given support, for example the children who are level 4 are given every opportunity to get to level 5, and so on.

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yeah sorry - i was a bit snappy last night - and i work in a junior school too so understand the frustration, but get far more worried about kids who are going on to sec school without basic maths understanding (eg times tables - cue riff from betmale) rather than the score they're going to achieve int their stats
also - sometimes as a school you just have to take the fall - we had the borough crawling all over us a couple of years ago cos our maths stats plummeted - but we had an unusually innumerate year group. dunno if the borough then congratulated themselves when they shot up the year after - but the kids were just plain cleverer

Whilst Andrew's post was, as always, a good one ... and I acknowledge the pressure on Primary Schools

I stick by my original post ... I am afraid that, in my opinion, the enforced work mentioned in the OP is going to make these children hate maths even more, they are ever being told they are failures ... when they would beready to have a go at some maths in a few years time they will have "done everything" and not be able to engage

If they cannot progress it is probably because they are being moved too fast ... figure out where they actually got stuck (probably at level 1 or 2) and build confidence and understanding rather than taking their really shakey foundations and trying to build skyscraper

Im not expecting an magic wand, but our school has historically had above average results in maths. We've had to put in lots of hard work, including booster classes and 1:1 etc. However, this year, we've got 12 children stuck at 3B and not moving AT ALL!!!! Teaching is excellent (we've even had consultants in to check teaching), concepts are understood one day, forgotten the next, chn rarely can apply concepts into problem solving etc. They can add one day, forget the next.... we're really frustrated... we've now reduced to teaching these 12 with one teacher and one TA and programming individual lessons based on identified need / securing level 3/4 booklets, springboard 5 and 6 and yet they are all stuck on 3B.

Most chn who joined us late had massively over inflated KS1 results which is really frustrating!! By the way : I'm the head - I was trying to help my teachers who are taking it all personally and I can't help them!!

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Yet the environment you are looking to create is exactly what will happen to KS3 teachers and leave those with the same problems you may pass on. These have to be endured for 5+ years also...........................
IMO we are here to educate kids

I would endorse many of the comments-children are not the widgets that Ofsted, LA, NNS (deceased), etc say they are. When I worked in a Primary School, if I mentioned this and that children progress when they are ready, I got a real going over. This type of comment contributed to my removal from my job. realism is not accepted.
Please don't push these children into hating maths-that will just affect the rest of their lives which is a greater price than one year's SATs results. I am 121 tutoring KS3 and Private Tutoring GCSE students in maths-it is heart breaking and a little soul destroying. Multiplication facts, number bonds +/-, division, fractions, decimals, %, doubling, halving, patterns of all sorts...lack of self-belief-the most common word in their lexicon is 'can't'.
The problem is of course the longer they take to be confident with these, the further behind they fall and the greater the pressure on them until they are considered not worth the bother.

"2 That nobody has picked you up on the SATs v 'National Curriculum Test' issue!"
OK. I'll state the obvious!
Plain fact.
SATs are tests for university entrance. If teachers model calling things by the correct names, they'll tell the children this simple truth. Children don't do Sats either - they finished in 1991.
The end of key Stage tests are really just national curriculum tests, not "sit and trembles" or anything like that. (And the official, correct and sensible abbreviation is "NCTs".)
Can't understand why teachers keep playing this con trick on the children and their parents. Suppose it's because the "SATs" lie has so much scare power behind it. Or maybe most teachers are truly ignorant about it. Find that hard to believe, though.